[desire2inspir]

Hello PT Friends,
I will be hosting a Family Literacy Night after Thanksgiving. A penny for your thoughts...I'd like to provide either a few door prizes, maybe one per grade level of a nice basket of literacy tools like a book, magnetic letters, bookmark, etc.... Any ideas on some inexpensive give aways families would actually use and kids would be excited about? Also what would be an easy way to give away the door prizes. We are expecting appx. 150 families to attend. We plan to divide them into fourths and have them rotate through 4 stations (20min.) so I need an easy way to get their attention and give the door prizes away. I'm all ears if you think of anything else

[n2n2n2n]

Ahh... the joys of being the literacy coach.
We are having a Books and Blankets Family Literacy Night tomorrow. I am not doing door prizes this time. Each family will receive a family literacy folder with reading strategies, log, book mark and tattoos (for some reason I have about 1000 sheets of tattoos and I figure this is a good way to get rid of them ). Last year I made writing kits for each family. The families in our school have for the most part lots of books at home so we are not giving each family a book, although we have done this in the past.

Last year we did have a draw with door prizes. We had books and gift certificates to use at our Book Fair. We gathered the whole group together at the end for the thanks and good nights and then had the draws for the door prizes.

I am always curious and looking for new ideas. What are the stations that you are setting up?

I am especially looking for ideas to motivate junior kids (our grades 4, 5), parents and their teachers to come out for a family night. I wondered about a Poetry Slam or Coffee House. Just not sure how to go about it.

[Garden Gal]

This might be too complicated for Literacy night--one of the public libraries did it this summer. Children are asked to bring gently used books that they have finished reading and in exchange can pick an equal number of books to take home. So if a child brings 5 books he gets 5 book coupons that he can use to "buy" 5 books that someone else brought. This wouldn't cost money, isn't a small plastic trinket that would break or get lost, and encourages reading.

[ismile]

For giving away door prizes, we gave each person a raffle ticket as they came in. They immediatly write their name on it and put it in a bucket. Every fifteen minutes we drew a few names and announced them on the intercom system.

[Mrs. T.]

Try the books and stuffed animals that Kohls sells for $5 a piece!